There’s still no word on the family friend that’s missing, aside from two people seeing him peek his head into a bar the Friday after he went missing. So, that makes things even weirder, in my opinion.

Rusty peed in the bedroom early Saturday morning (just before 2 a.m.) just as I was settling in to begin “Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince” (HBP). I was quite pissed. He’s never done that before, and he’d better not do it ever again, or he’ll get the boot!

Went to the family cookout Saturday on about three hours of sleep, but I didn’t get too grouchy, surprisingly enough. It was nice to see everyone, and I even got to watch my parents, Dave, cousins, uncle, and other sundry people play cornhole and listen to lots of people make jokes pertaining to cornhole. We also listened to HBP on the way there and back, so the drive time didn’t take too much away from the finishing of the book.

Which, by the way, I did around 2:30 a.m. Saturday. I must say, I am really not happy with J.K. Rowling at this moment. Dave and I kept saying “I don’t like the way this book has started … I don’t have a good feeling about this …” Not that the book is bad, mind you, just, well, we didn’t like where we thought she was going with it. I kept hoping and hoping that what I thought was going to happen didn’t happen, but it did. I bawled my eyes out toward the end when *NAME WITHHELD* died. (And if I just spoiled things a bit for anyone, I apologize, but where the hell have you been? Don’t you read the papers? Rowling said ages ago that she was going to kill off another main character!)

Then today I got to go to work. Hooray! I also learned today that the little girl next door has started taking after her brother and repeatedly asking “What are you doing?” I can’t figure out though if she’s actually talking to the dog, or if she thinks my name is Rusty, or if she just calls both of us Rusty because she can’t remember my name, because she kept saying “Rusty, what are you doing?” or “What are you doing, Rusty?” She just turned 3 so who knows what’s in her head. But I am so looking forward to having two kids scream at me from their porch! Um, no, not so much.

And then MB broke the rules and tagged me, too. So I guess my assignment is to list my current six favorite songs and then pick six others to do the same.

OK, my songs are, in no particular order:

1. Redneck Woman by Gretchen Wilson
2. Beer for My Horses by Toby Keith and Willie Nelson
3. You’ll Think of Me by Keith Urban
4. Break Down Here by Julie Roberts
5. Speed by Montgomery Gentry
6. When You Come Back to Me Again by Garth Brooks

I think I’ll be blaring the country music this weekend, thanks to this.

Now I’m supposed to tag six others. Problem with that is I don’t know six other bloggers … I admit it, I’m a lurker and love to read but never comment! I like to browse through MB’s blogroll, but I thought it would be quite rotten to use her list here since she found them.

Anyway, since I don’t have a lot of options for tagging, I’ll choose Tasha and if any of her fellow bloggers feel like doing it, they can too!

I didn’t get around to checking out the picture stuff here yet, so maybe that’ll be my weekend project whilst bringing down the roof with fiddles and steel guitars. Or maybe I’ll look at that flickr thing. In reality, I probably won’t do either, but at least I’m thinking about it.

So, guess what? Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince comes out in two weeks! I absolutely can’t stand it! I saw a picture at work Wednesday night of stacks and stacks and stacks of the books at a warehouse somewhere on the East Coast (AP wasn’t allowed to disclose the location), and I was so fucking jealous of the people standing next to them! Do you think any of them snuck a peek at the first chapter? I WOULD! I wouldn’t be able to stop myself! All those books, begging to be read! And Jim Dale, the guy who records them on tape, he’s already done the tapes and knows what happens! I have never wanted to be a British man before now. (That means I want to be Jim Dale, for those of you who are having trouble keeping up)

For Order of the Phoenix, I stayed up until about 7 a.m. reading, got a bit of sleep, and had that thing finished by the end of the day. And it is quite a hefty book, ya know.

The worst thing is that my uncle is having a family cookout the day Half Blood Prince comes out, and I’m pretty sure many aunts and uncles, not to mention my parents, would be a bit pissed if we didn’t go because I had to spend the day reading. So, Dave is still going to get the book at midnight, along with the tapes, I’m going to read the first chapter as soon as he gets home, and then we’ll listen to the book on the way to my uncle’s house. And maybe I’ll hide in a corner with the book book, because I really just cannot wait to read the damn thing! Two Weeks!

Oh yeah, and my birthday is in one week. But in two weeks I’ll know who the half blood prince is and who dies! Priorities people!

Hey Blogger, I’m getting really fucking tired of losing a post every time I try to post! I guess I need to start copying everything before I try and post it so I can go back and paste it in when it refuses to post.

To briefly go over what I TRIED to say a few minutes ago, either I’m retarded or Ohio’s government Web site sucks, because I can’t find information about online business rules or vendor’s licenses.

The cover of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” has been released. It doesn’t seem to be as detailed as previous covers, but what the hell do I know.

Add Ohio to list of things that piss me off – oh wait, it’s already on that list. We’ll just bump it up to the top! Why is it that I can’t find any information about the state’s rules for online businesses on the state’s Web site? I know there are online businesses based in Ohio, and I’m sure you have to have some kind of vendor’s license, but I can’t find a damned thing about it. Maybe I’m just too sleepy, I dunno. I just don’t want to have to call down to Columbus and get put on hold for who knows how long. Bleh.

But on a cheery note, in case you haven’t heard, the cover for “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” has been released. Doesn’t seem very detailed, pretty much just Dumbledore and Harry seemingly staring into a smoking pillar. As always, I’m sure it will make sense once the book has been read, which will be by the end of July 17, the day it comes out! Just over four months! Woo-hoo!

All is right with the world. My Harry Potter Goblet of Fire & Order of the Phoenix (GoF & OotP for those of you as obsessed as I am) have been returned. I loaned them to a lady in the rental office months ago and finally asked after them yesterday. I’m seriously going to have to rethink my borrowing system, or start charging fines like the library. But anyway, I can get started on OotP for the third (or is it fourth) time and get back to hunting for clues. I’m pathetic.

It’s a damn good thing I don’t have a bad back, because I’m pretty sure I’d have thrown it out several times in the last few days. Our landlord apparently doesn’t believe in salting sidewalks or the parking lot, so there have been some rather painful and unnatural movements on my part. I’ve taken to kind of rocking from side to side as I take tiny little baby steps, because it seems to work for penguins. Although today I found myself shouting “Son of a bitch!” on my dinner break as I tried to make it to the building. Serious back and knee twistage, but I remained upright.

Ever wonder what Harry Potter would be like drunk? Well, come watch me play “Harry Potter” on our new Gamecube thingy. Watch as Harry the Alcoholic runs into walls! Watch as Harry the Alcoholic runs into people! Watch as Harry the Alcoholic runs into furniture! Some of you may know about the 17-F-er OSU game…well I put that to shame in a matter of a couple hours. But I am determined to figure this game out, no matter how long it takes. I’m just glad we forgot to buy a memory card.

Obviously I’m not a whiz with the video games – at least not the story-type games. Give me a puzzle game, I’m good to go, though. Just makes me think of the good old days, when Nintendo first came out. For a while, all we had was Mario, Duck Hunt and a track & field thing with a mat that you ran in place on. Then there was Tetris, and my beloved Bubble Bobble. That game kicked ass!

I really took a trip down toy memory lane when I read MB’s blog. She mentioned FashionPlates and Lite Brite, and I was gone. Kids were so much more easily amused when I was little…slap a few pieces of plastic with raised pictures on them in a slot, put a piece of paper over it, rub the crayon over it and Voila! You’re a fashion designer! For those of you too young or old to know of the FashionPlates, or for those of you of the wrong gender, I’ll explain. There were tons of plastic “plates” with a different third of an outfit on it – I think that’s how it went anyway, maybe it was halves. Anyway, you mix and match the pieces to create an outfit, and put the pieces into the holder. Like I said before, the outfits are raised up so that when you put the paper on top and rub the big crayon over it, you ended up with a picture of your new fashion design. Then you could color it in.

So compare nice simple toys like that to today’s toys, and there’s no comparison. Ours were better.

Back to the present. It started snowing while we were at dinner. I was not happy. We went and priced our new toy at Wal-Mart, and then went to Meijer, where we bought our new toy. After we left Meijer, I realized we should have bought more juice, so we decided to stop at Kroger. As I was turning onto a little side road to go to Kroger, we had some major fishtailing and almost hit another car. Not fun. But we got our juice and made the trip home safely with no other near misses.

BTW, I want everyone to know that I am highly upset because Meijer (or at least Findlay’s Meijer) no longer has the Meijer-brand lotion tissues. The other brands suck – one uses too much lotion and leaves your face and hands greasy, another one doesn’t even feel like there’s any lotion in it. Meijer’s was just right. How Goldilocks. Doesn’t Meijer care about people with evil colds that cause sore noses?? Perhaps I’ll ask Dave to check BG’s Meijer on Monday. I’m in crisis!